


Present Future Praeteritum

by cognomen



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 17:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3217523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He follows behind in the hopes that he will see - that he will see why they choose the course that they have, what keeps them somehow bound. Not in brotherhood, certainly, not as soldiers found themselves bound by trial and fire.</i>
</p><p>  <i>What he finds is an odd patchwork in uncommon cause and yet aligning in quest.</i></p><p>  <i>He cannot trust it.</i></p><p>A Vossler introspective and a chance to right some wrongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Future Praeteritum

He follows behind in the hopes that he will see - that he will see why they choose the course that they have, what keeps them somehow bound. Not in brotherhood, certainly, not as soldiers found themselves bound by trial and fire.

What he finds is an odd patchwork in uncommon cause and yet aligning in quest.

He cannot trust it. Not even Basch, familiar in combat, easy at Vossler's back but with unfamiliar scars on his own. 

He cannot see this thing that barely works - pirates, princesses, children and kingslayers - he cannot see that it will bear fruit. He cannot tell how many will live to see it fail.

But for now it holds, tentative. He can sit at the fire, adjacent but not amongst, and watch. Until Basch settles heavily next to him, creaking and groaning a protest that is not solely from his borrowed armor.

Vossler's eyes find their youngest, then, and both knights feel a moment of envy, watching them continue to play - light of limb and bright of eye - attempting to coerce Balthier and Fran into a game of jousts. 

"Would that we could trade and have youth back again," Basch observes.

"Trade what?" Vossler asks, letting his gaze fall away from the kids. "What have we of value to offer instead? To youth, experience has little value - they will of course gain it on their own."

Basch makes an acquiescent noise.

"Not a trade, then. A theft, perhaps."

"Too much time amongst pirates," Vossler suggests, but he does find some amusement in the suggestion that they should steal back their years.

If Basch is not the kingslayer the world claims, then perhaps he is owed back the years with which he paid for the crime. It is the sort of debt to which life paid little heed. 

"Perhaps," Basch allows. "But you might learn a thing or two in grace from such."

Vossler snorts. "I never needed grace before."

Basch eyes the protruding hilt of his Nightmare, extending tall over Vossler's shoulder, and seems to agree. Vossler knows himself to be slow and heavy, both immovable and capable of great force.

Yet, that had not served him in such an environment of politics and intrigue. The new subtlety to which he has been driven seems barely to suit him, and yet - was it not the language of the new Archadian world? Surviving, making deals, learning the language. 

"What have we become?" Vossler asks, lulled to melancholy by the contrast of warm air and chill - from the fire and night - against his skin. 

"We are soldiers still," Basch assures him. "We have a country, still."

"For you that is untrue twice over," Vossler reminds. It is unkind. He does not feel inclined to kindness. 

"The _land_ is there, Vossler. The _people_ -"

"Trodden to heel beneath-"

"Vossler," Basch coaxes, a familiar tone of exasperation.

It manages to stop the tirade - as Basch has ever managed him without chastisement. Basch gestures at the two Rabanastran kids, now having put the pirate thoroughly out of sorts. Vaan and Penelo are bright eyed, trouble enough for ten such youths and had nearly been raised entire under the heel of Archades.

"They'll remember who they are - all of them - faster than you would guess."

Vossler sighs.

Under peace, with Ashe restored to the throne, perhaps they would. Wasn't that what he worked towards? A soldier marching so long and so far for war that he forgot all the parts of himself save those needed to function in marching.

Yet he is tired. Inertia pulls him ever earthward these days. The promise of an end is so sweet he hopes it has not blinded him.

"Vossler," Basch begins, reaching out to him. "Your burden is shared. Whether you trust me to help carry it or not, try laying it down sometime to see."

"Not so easily done as said."

"Nothing ever is."

Nothing ever is. Wisdom simplified as Basch had ever simplified such things. He was happy, too, in his simplicity, as Vossler had never quite managed.

He sighs, enjoying the scent of cool air contrasted with the warm wood smoke of the fire. He tries, as Basch had suggested, to relax.

A broad, warm palm settles against his back, at the top of his shoulders, what part he can feel round the hard metal plates that protect his back. His fingers slip beneath the ring buckled around Vossler's neck and give just a faint tug. For a moment, time reverses in Vossler's mind, recalling memories from his younger days The soothing motion of Basch's fingers eases him as it had in tense moments of their youth. It is the contact, the faint constriction when he swallows. 

"Let it be," Basch's voice is an undertone, an old game that Vossler is not sure should still exist between them.

"Basch," Vossler warns.

Basch's fingers tighten, teasing. 

"What would you rather, old friend?" Basch asks. "Isolation and anger or company and ease?"

"The past from which this emerges is where it belongs," Vossler argues, getting up, pulling free of the touch. The past is too tricky a comfort to risk descent into. He cannot forget that it is now gone.

"Good night," he tells Basch, and takes his leave, too, of the princess before he retreats into his tent.

-

 

He thinks of that moment, sometimes, when he sees Basch amongst his other companions, well integrated and laughing. 

"Will he not ever earn your trust?" Ashe asks, misreading his long gazes and dark expression. It isn't mistrust so much as a lack of understanding, a concern. 

"Are you saying he has so quickly earned yours?" Vossler challenges her.

Ashe lowers her eyelids and glances at him through them, the same expression she has measured him with since her youth. Then she offers a hesitant smile, the transformation slower than it had once been, but no less genuine. It grows brighter on her care-worn features when Vossler does not answer the smile. It is the same response he has always given to her flights of fancy.

"Vossler," she says, relaxing her posture. "Whether I trust him fully or not, tension hasn't served us at all. To this point, he has proven true to his words, as you have. He is a stalwart defender, as you are. Once, you were inseparable friends-"

"That was before he killed a king," Vossler reminds.

Ashe shakes her head. 

"Besides, Vossler says, trying to defuse a long conversation stemming from a misunderstanding of intent, "I am only uncertain what merits he finds in such company."

"Hope, Vossler," she tells him, and she is smiling her infuriating optimist’s smile again. White teeth, dimples. Shining eyes. 

It makes him feel old, slow. More than he usually has felt these days.

"Give him innocence until he proves himself guilty," she requests.

Vossler cannot argue that he is the only one still watching for Basch's signs of guilt - he does not know what he expects to see. Perhaps clandestine meetings with Archadians, to lay down a trap in secret. Perhaps an attempt to force a truce, to give audience in whatever fashion he found possible to his princess.

He does not watch Basch now from suspicion, but because despite how common a background they shared, Basch sees some other way to see this through. Some harder way, dependant on faith and effort, to reach their goal. He watches Basch now to be sure the other does not suspect _him_.

Ashe waits beside him, in solidarity or for an answer, but he gives nor allows either. After a time, she lays a hand reassuringly on his shoulder, and leaves him to his thoughts - of past and present; of cloudy, uncertain future.

-

The ship is failing beneath his own unsteady grip, falling wounded from the sky as his plans had. Strong arms hook beneath his own and pull, dragging him hard enough to wake agony through all his new wounds.

"Basch you fool," he snarls. "Leave me before you get left yourself."

"Wrong on two counts," the voice answers -sharp, accented, strained with effort. "First, your failing eyesight has given you the wrong personage. Second, if your Captain ever tried to _captain_ the Strahl, he would regret it."

It makes no sense, but when Vossler looks up - the pirate braces himself and heaves his burden over another few precious feet of decking - it is Balthier indeed.

Vossler cannot reconcile it, in his mind.

"Get your feet under you if you can still feel them, Azelas," Balthier orders. "Your armor and all the stuffing in it is heavier than the weight of your sins."

Vossler pushes. He is beyond argument, feeling the tremor of the ship falling from the very sky, shrieking and groaning, until Balthier has propped most of him on the Strahl's gangway. More hands descend at last to help haul Vossler the rest of the way onto that smaller ship. There is not time enough for protest.

Vossler supposes he will hear it later. It must be Fran who finally helps him, Balthier at the helm of his ship until the air is clear and solid beneath their wings again. She says nothing, but shows her sharp teeth when she works her healing magics, and Vossler does not even dare speak to thank her.

He sleeps, thinking of Nightmare dead on the deck of the ship, of the sword falling from the sky and spinning until it shattered itself on the earth somewhere.

"Well," the voice wakes him, the presence standing over his bead is unfamiliar enough to make him tense. "I suppose you'll survive."

The pain is intense, an ache along the whole length of him, and worst in his mind.

"You should have left me," he tells the pirate. 

"No one deserves to die of such idiocy," Balthier drawls, displeased with Vossler and yet clearly not angry. "Or amongst such idiots."

Vossler cannot tell if he is included in the assessment. He feels he should be. "You have bid me live a traitor and treasoner when the penalty for such is justly death."

"Spare me," Balthier hisses.

Vossler goes quiet. His mind is not the roil he had expected, but barren of thought and quiet. 

"You have earned your sin among sinners, Azelas," Balthier continues, after a moment. "Traitors and treasoners all, in one way or another. Yours is the most personally _annoying_ , but as the rest of us have allowed-"

Vossler sighs and it hurts through his chest nearly all the way to his toes; he feels suddenly bone weary, as if he needs to lay down for a very long time. He supposes he'll get that wish. If Balthier ever stops talking.

"I'll take great satisfaction in watching you try to redeem yourself," Balthier says, his tone a purr rich with pleasure. Then, all amusement fades from his features and he hesitates, running his teeth over his lower lip in an unusually pensive expression. Vossler has rarely seen him in such a serious attitude. 

"There is no reasoning with Vayne Solidor, no power in the eyes of the council that is not absolute," Balthier tells him.

Vossler wonders what a sky pirate can know of it, even the boy of a scientist grown wings and flown away. 

" _Your_ power, by the way, remains useful to the rest of us," Balthier says, returning to his usual catty levity. "Remind yourself of that, in the oncoming future."

-

[End.]

**Author's Note:**

> -Written at the request of a friend who sometimes has the same old cravings I do. 
> 
> -This work Beta'd by the amazingly patient Quedarius (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius), who I would pull out of a burning airship first.


End file.
